Already Trapped (Laura Frost FBI)

“This is a good start,” Laura said, nodding as she already began to form a picture in her head of who they were looking for. “But I think we need to head to the second scene and take a look. It’s far away?”

Gausse shook her head. “Not far at all. Frome can drive us. Let’s head out.”

***

The second apartment block was a little older, a little shabbier around the edges. Maybe this was the less successful of the sisters, at least in their lives so far.

Gausse led them to an apartment on the first floor, larger and with more rooms than the first crime scene. It was well-kept, and Laura remembered the detail about the roommate in the case notes. This, then, must have been the twin that was found first.

“Which was struck first?” Laura asked.

“Ruby, where I met you, was the first to die,” Gausse said. “But Jade, here, was the first to be discovered. There wasn’t long in it. Maybe just enough time for someone to drive over here, make their way inside, and attack. In this case, the window in the bathroom was open—looking at the garbage can out in the alley there, we believe someone would have been able to climb up. They weren’t able to find any prints on the sill except what looked like Jade’s own.”

Laura nodded, taking this all in. She had a critical eye on everything: the floors, the walls, looking for any small thing that might have been missed so far. Gausse led them to the bathroom, where another pool of blood lay slick over the tiles. Another missing body, another stack of grisly photographs for them to look through.

Laura tore her eyes away from the slippery pool of the floor to study them. It was strange, looking at these. Jade and Ruby had been identical, enough so that it gave Laura the odd feeling of seeing the same woman die twice. The killer might as well have simply moved the body to a different scene, if it wasn’t for the fact that their clothing was different—although the original color was now so soaked with blood it was hard to distinguish.

“Any estimate on the number of wounds?” Laura asked.

“Seventeen.” Gausse shook her head grimly. “This one suffered defensive wounds to her hands, and there was also some scraping to her palms which corresponded with skin fragments lifted from the windowsill. Of course, they still need to undergo testing, but we believe she may have tried to escape out the window. He would have dragged her back, thrown her down, and commenced the knife attack.”

“This is almost exactly the same,” Nate said, voicing Laura’s own thoughts. “We’re dealing with someone who carried a lot of anger and vented it here on the women. But why them?”

“It could be a personal vendetta,” Laura said, picking up on what he was saying. “That’s the most obvious option. Both of them being twins means they would have had a lot in common. They grew up together, shared the same family, probably a lot of overlap in their circle of friends. Someone who was angry with one of them could just as easily be angry with both.”

“Which means we have to determine what reason anyone would have had to dislike them,” Nate said, then corrected himself. “More than dislike—hate. This kind of frenzied attack combined with the premeditated action of tracking them down one by one is not just something that happened in the heat of the moment. There’s the drive over here, the scouting of a way to break in, the climbing through the window. All of that is time in which someone who acted on the spur of the moment with Ruby could calm down—but they continued to attack Jade anyway. I think this has to be triggered by some kind of event, something that happened between the attacker and the twins.”

“Agreed,” Laura said. “Which means, Captain Gausse, we’d be grateful if you could show us to where we can interview their parents and family. Right now, they’re our best guess for finding some answers. We need to figure out if this is a one-time thing and the killer’s rage is spent, or whether we should be on the lookout for others.”

Gausse nodded smartly, a look of satisfaction gleaming in her eyes. “I have them waiting for you at the precinct already,” she said.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Laura allowed Nate to step into the room ahead of her, hanging back just a little. She hated this part. Talking to the parents of murder victims. It was horrible to see their distress, to understand what they had lost. She had already lost Lacey once, and not even permanently. It was hard to even imagine how much worse death would be, because if she tried, it was like her whole body and mind choked up, frozen and terrified. And they had lost not one daughter, but two, within an hour of each other.

True to form, a cacophony of questions met them as they stepped into the space, a kind of private waiting area reserved for these more informal talks. It was comfortably furnished and brightly lit, unlike the interview rooms where suspects would be led.

“Have you heard any leads?”

“Do you know who did this to our girls?”

Nate raised both hands in a gesture of surrender as he stepped inside. Gausse took the initial lead, letting Nate and Laura seat themselves on a sofa opposite the family as she spoke. “Please, I know this is incredibly difficult. We have the FBI working the case now. This is Agents Frost and Lavoie, and they’d like to ask you some questions to help with the investigation. Do you feel able to speak with them right now?”

The parents, both of them, slowly sank back onto the sofa from where they had sprung up. They were middle-aged, both of them fraying slightly at the edges—gray hairs here, wrinkles there. Their faces were pale, eyes glassy and red-rimmed from a night of shock and grief. She was red-haired like her daughters, still slim and pretty. He was taller, broader, with dark hair and a short beard. They clasped each other’s hands like they were life preservers, knuckles white where they gripped hard.

“We’re very sorry for your loss,” Laura said in a soft tone, hoping that would help to focus their attention. “At the moment, we’re in the early stages, but we think you might be able to help us shine a light on some possible leads.”

“Anything you need,” the father said, his jaw clenched tight and his voice hoarse.

“All right, Mr. Patrickson,” Nate said. “If you could tell us about your daughters, about their relationship with other people. Could you imagine anyone who might be angry with them, or carry a grudge?”

The man blinked, glancing at his wife and shaking his head. “No,” he said. “No, not our girls. They were… they were liked. Popular. Everyone loved them.”

“He’s right,” the mother spoke up, her voice dry as though she had cried all the moisture out of it. “They were good girls. It’s not just something parents say. I really mean it. People liked them. They had a lot of friends. Even after leaving school—they made friends quickly.”

Laura made a mental note, and an internal groan. The more friends they had, the more potential suspects were out there. All of them would have to be interviewed and checked out in case of any potential suspicions. At least they had the local PD to help them out with getting through it all. “Even so,” she said. “Can you think of anyone who wasn’t happy with them? Someone they had a falling out with, maybe—even if it was a while ago?”

The parents looked at each other, searching one another’s faces for answers. But in tur